YouSaid · the spoken record

Lawrence Wright

lines on the record

75

first

2023-09-28

most recent

2023-09-28

sittings or episodes

1

sources

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “No, it was an independent, it was funded by the Ford Foundation and also the Readers Digest Foundation And it was an interesting, it had just gone out of business several months before and they lost their staff. And then they got a new grant. And so I was the one knocking on the door. So they called me the white writer and I was the only writer there for most of the time I was there. And it was once again a blessing for me to be exposed to the central social problem of our country's history at that time.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “It was what was available. I mean, it was an interesting time because it was just at the moment that I decided I was going to go get a job in a newspaper and I was going to look through New Orleans and Atlanta and places like that. At that moment, the newspapers realized that they were staffed by people exactly like me, young white men. And they didn't want anymore. And so I got this everywhere I went, you know, and it turned out the only place I could get a job was at the race relations reporter. They didn't have any black writers.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “And I didn't have enough experience in the world really to write a novel. But also I found out that people will pay you for information. And that's what a journalist is able to get. So that was the only way I could get into the writing game. And I'm really grateful for it because I wish a lot of young people would do this like you did when you were a young newspaper man. You know, when you're a reporter, you have to go out and see other people's perspectives.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “If I'm going to write, I got to get paid for it. I had. First of all, I had the idea that I wanted to be a writer, but that turns out to be quite an open question because what kind of writer would I be? And I thought I'll be a poet in Greenwich Village. You know, first of all, I didn't read poetry. I don't care for it very much. I had no idea about”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “And it was a wonderful experience, David. I mean, it took a very provincial boy like I was in Dallas, Texas in the middle of America, and put him into another world where a very poor country, adorable students. I just had the greatest time teaching them. It taught me a lot about who I was, but also who I was as an American. Over a long career, I've spent a lot of time in poor and tyrannical countries. And I will never... Devalue the US passport that allows me to get out of there. You know, I just know that all those people that I talk to oftentimes are just trapped in a life that will never be as fulfilling as mine was.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “American University in Cairo had an office across the street at eight sixty six UN Plaza. And so I walked across the street, not knowing that we had no diplomatic relations with Egypt at the time. I don't think I knew exactly what language they spoke. I didn't know anything. I knew they'd had a war, but it wasn't the war of interest to me. And so 30 minutes after I walked in, they said, can you leave tonight? And I said, no, I can't leave tonight. My girlfriend's back in Boston. I haven't told my parents what I'm up. Can you leave tomorrow? Yeah, I'm going tomorrow. Next day I flew and landed at midnight at 9 the next morning. I taught my first class.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “I think had it been World War II, we would have all And anyway, I filed to be a conscientious objector. And to my astonishment, I was granted that status in Dallas, Texas, they've just floored me. And I had two weeks to find a job. And typically they're the bed pen jobs. But it was during the Nixon semi-depression. And, you know, there was no such jobs available. People were taking them. Also, the requirements were that you had to live 50 miles from, it had to be 50 miles from home, had to pay very little, and it had to be nominally in the interest of the United States. So I went to New York and I thought, I'm going to go to the UN and they'll give me a job that pays very little and sends me far, far away. And the lady at the desk said, no, we don't do that. But here's a list of American institutions abroad.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “In Dallas, all the Dallas Cowboys went into that. And so he was going to get me into that. So we sat at lunch with his general. And I thought, it was so creepy. To be able to exercise privilege like that was morally repellent to me. And then my family doctor said, I can find something wrong with your kidneys. And once again, I thought, you know, there was this, who am I? Am I the kind of person that would take the privilege that I've been born into and use it to avoid a war that I don't want to go to and somebody else will have to take my place? It was a really terrible moral compromise. And I just, you know, I was so angry at the country. I was angry at my dad. I was angry at his whole, you know, greatest generation that had gotten us into Vietnam in the first place. But I was so typical of. Boys my age, you know, we were.”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Rose, you know, like real soldiers. And then say the pledge of allegiance. And then take one step forward and you're in the army or the Marines. And everybody step forward but me. And I thought, what am I doing? I really was like in a fugue state, you know, standing there in my underwear, who am I and what kind of American am I that I want to be here and I can't take that step. And so my final year in school was all about do I go to Canada? Should I just go to prison, which is, you know, the other alternative? But then I discovered that for a middle class white kid, there were plenty of alternatives. My father arranged lunch with the head of the Army Reserve, which is...”

   2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “And I was in ROTC. You know, I mean, I had a desire to serve, but I also had a sense that this war was cruelly wrong and a mistaken move on our part. And I was really torn. You know, I felt I wanted to be a patriot and go serve my country, but I also thought, would I be serving my country to prosecute this war? There was a mourning in the summer before my senior year where I decided I was going to join the Marines and be a medic. So that was going to be my solution. And I went down to... The post office where all these kids, the buses were coming in from the rural areas and all these kids had been drafted and they were going to the post office to sign up. And I went in, I hadn't been drafted. And, you know, Strip down to your underwear and go through all these tests, and then you line up and”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Yeah, that was the hardest part was, you know, Vietnam was in some respects a war between the generations in America. And my father and I had the bitterest quarrels, you know, the dinner table was a, you know, battle zone. And I wanted to be like him. You know, he was, you can see he got some of his medals up here.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “For the community. And a lot of times, you know, I've written about Scientology and Mormons and Amish. And I mean, just a ton of different religions, but sometimes it seems to me that the fringier the organization, the more devout the membership, because you have to climb over this fence of disbelief and subscribe to something that outsiders would say is utterly ridiculous.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “I think because I was a pious teenager, I've understood how faith can exert so much force in a person's behavior. You know, we talk about politics all the time. People can have strong political beliefs, and it doesn't affect the way they behave at all. And yet, if you have strong religious beliefs, it tends to dictate every aspect of your life. As a reporter, I always thought it was something that shouldn't be left on the table. I've written about so many different faith groups. And one of the things that I took away from that is so often when I talk about beliefs, you know, the answer would be, well, we believe this. And I was focusing on the nouns that followed, you know, rather than the pronoun that began the sentence, we believe. It's the we that, you know, essentially is the organizing principle of. Religion people come together”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Well, that's true too. And we think of the kind of civil war being between the extreme right and the Antifa and something like that. But honestly, in Texas, you're beginning to see the Republicans turning on each other. And I don't know if they're going to start drawing down their guns. But in part, it's because liberals are so marginal in Texas that there's no one's bothering to fight against them. The animosity and personal nature of it is dismaying. And I don't know where it'll lead, but looking back at the assassination is a sober reminder where it could go.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “But look what it took to break the fever in Dallas. You know, I think that something has to happen to change the current course that we're on. But I fear an insurrection.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “And it was berserk. And, you know, H.L. Hunt was the richest man in the world, and he funded this lifeline radio, which was kind of a precursor of the Rush Limbaugh and that kind of thing that became one of the ways in which the right redefined America. So it was all implicit in Dallas at that point. I've said this before, and I don't want people in Dallas to take this the wrong way, but if Kennedy had to be killed somewhere, I'm glad he was killed in Dallas. It changed the city. And it made it a healthier place. And so it went from this hubris, this crazy hubris to being humiliated. And in the process of that transformation, it discovered. Humility”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “I think that's true, although I look back at Dallas in the 60s and late 50s before the assassination. And so much of what we experienced in modern America was characteristic of Dallas' extreme right. And I mean, lunatic type of, you know, for instance, they took out all the poppies from the parks because they were red. You know, there was just bizarre things. They refused federal money for school lunches.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “I remember one time we were on a family vacation in Mexico and there was another couple at a table next to us and they overheard our conversation and the husband leans over where are you from? We're from Dallas and they got up and left their meal. I remember driving through Mississippi and we were on our way to Florida and stopping for gas and this gas station attendant looks into the car and you go get three kids in the back seat and he sticks his head into the window and he says y'all kill the president. And those really leave marks on you because you realize that people hate you for what you can't change about yourself, that you're from this place.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Well, I was in algebra class and the three tones came on the PA system and the principal's voice was all choked and clouded with emotion. And it was hard to understand him at first. But I got the words, the president has been shot. And the big clue came when our teacher, Irwin Hill, of former Chicago Bears player stood up and tears streaming from his eyes, walked out of the class. And I think at that moment I understood that it was a tragedy and it was that it could bring this big man humble him so deeply. It was strange to be from Dallas after that. People hated us because we were Dallasites.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “You know, it was really in high school that I had a teacher sort of call me out and start assigning me some books that she wasn't assigning to other people in the class. And then when I was a senior in high school, this teacher Elizabeth Inlow, she would have us on Friday afternoon the entire class would choose three words to put into a short story. And it could be, you know, it could be any three words in the whole dictionary, but we had to incorporate them. And it was a puzzle, but it also was kind of a goad to write a short story. And so on Monday, we would come back into class. Each read our story. But that was the moment, I think, that this is for me. And I got joy out of it. And I didn't feel that way in chemistry.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Yeah, my father loved to read, but my mother was totally absorbed as a reader. And I think that both of my younger sisters also wrote books. And I think that it was a strategy to capture our mother's attention, especially during the summers. We would all go to the library with cardboard boxes and load up with books. It was exciting, you know, just to have so much to choose from.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “And I think that at that moment he saw which side the power was on. But, you know, he went to a little bank in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and then a mid-sized bank in Abilene, Texas. And then finally got a position as president in what was a little bank in a strip shopping center in Dallas, which he made into a big bank. He was a very successful banker at the end of his career.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “And it was very hard times. And his father, when he was 12 years old, his father took him to the bank to negotiate the crop loan.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Well, he was ambitious and he could find a job in the bank business in the early 50s was hard. He'd just come back from seven years and more. He'd been World War II in Korea. And he had been a lawyer and he didn't find that to his taste. And so he decided to go into banking. And I think the reason he did is that he grew up in Kansas, which became the dust bowl.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Well, I'm honored by your remarks, David. It means a lot to me. I've admired you too and been very grateful for your contribution to our politics.”

    2023-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 551 — Lawrence Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source